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BIO323 Research Skills Guide: Google Scholar

About Google Scholar

Use Google Scholar to search across many disciplines and locate resources such as articles, theses, books, and more. It allows natural language searching, forgives spelling errors, and helps to find related and citing material.

Google Scholar's limitations are that, unlike Primo Search, it searches beyond the Charles Sturt University Library's holdings and may find resources that are not available to you. It is also not as good at refining searches as Primo Search and the journal databases.

Watch the video to learn more about Google Scholar, including setting Scholar preferences to find Charles Sturt University Library links. 

Or, try Google Scholar in the search box below.

Google Scholar Search

Connecting Google Scholar to CSU items

There are 2 ways which you can use Google Scholar to connect to CSU Library collection of online journals/articles.

  • Access Google Scholar via the Library's Google Scholar page OR
  • Go to Google Scholar
    • Click on at the top of the screen
    • Select Settings option
    • Select Library links
    • Enter Charles Sturt University and click  Search button
    • Tick Charles Sturt University - Find it at CSU and click Save

Clicking on the Find it at CSU link takes you to the Primo Search record for the article and then to the article in the database, where it is held.

Advanced search

Use the Advanced Search option to refine your search results.

  • Go to Google Scholar
  • Click on at the top of the screen
  • Select Advanced search
  • Enter your search query and click the Search button

Using Google Scholar

Try it now

In the Google Scholar search box, try typing in the keywords – invertebrate drift, stream, river, freshwater, running water, diel pattern (or other keywords that you identified in your topic analysis)

  • Notice the number of results you get? Probably hundreds of thousands? However these will not all be available to you through the Library's subscriptions and holdings
  • Look for the Find it at CSU links to the right of the article titles – if they are present, the Library has that article and you can use this link to the journal databases to access it. If you can't see it, you may be expected to pay a fee to access the article
  • See the menu on the left of the results that says Anytime - change this to 2020 to find articles published in the last five years

Charles Sturt University acknowledges the traditional custodians of the lands on which its campuses are located, paying respect to Elders, both past and present, and extend that respect to all First Nations Peoples.Acknowledgement of Country

Charles Sturt University is an Australian University, TEQSA Provider Identification: PRV12018. CRICOS Provider: 00005F.